Billboards & Marketing Context

A great post in Fast Company about the power of billboards to transform R&D combined with a recent road trip got me thinking about the power of context in marketing. Billboards are a great litmus test for this because the target audience shares a lot of contextual similarities: they’re travelling down the road at 70+ mph in a vehicle of some sort and are likely to have a fairly immediate need for food, gas, or a place to stay.

But audience context is likewise valuable in other marketing settings – whether one-to-one, print, or online. Let’s get the slam-dunk out of the way: if you have strong brand recognition and a known value proposition that your target audience likely has immediate need of, you’re done.

What if you don’t have an immediately-recognizable brand or value proposition? A couple of billboards I ran across on my trip offer a study in contrast:

The billboard on the left doesn’t immediately convey a value proposition, other than that they sell golf shoes (maybe a big need in Florida, but I digress). The low-contrast text and busy design doesn’t help drivers quickly focus on the important information – compare to the Burger King billboard above.

In contrast, the billboard on the right is a simple, clear message with high contrast and a memorable URL. Usually, websites and phone numbers are quickly lost – if they were ever retained – by drivers since they have other things to pay attention to. But this one got the message across to the point where I remembered the URL days after my road trip.

Drivers have at most a couple of seconds to devote to your billboard – if you can’t clearly communicate during that time, you’ve lost. This lesson in context applies equally to other settings:

Using a QR code in an online ad completely ignores the beauty of the web – that you can easily click through to any relevant content.

The converse is also true: if you need a QR code in your print add to convey your message, you’re not doing it right. (The exception, of course, is when a QR code leads to the desired action like downloading an app.)